Professor Sikka’s statistics show the grip of big money tightening over our government – how can it be weakened?

Professor of Accountancy, Prem Sikka. sees the government ‘dutifully rewriting the budget to appease financial elites’, commenting ‘None of this has brought prosperity or happiness to the masses’. The evidence of a broken economy and democracy all around us is presented. Here are just four of the seventeen statistics taken from his well-sourced article:

• With underfunding of the National Health Service (NHS), some 7.1 million people are awaiting appointment for hospital treatment compared to 2.5 million in 2010 and 4.5 million in February 2020, just before the pandemic. Some 2.5 million are unable to work regularly because of chronic illness and mental health issues, with the largest increase amongst younger people aged 25-34.
• Some 500,000 workers have dropped out of the labour market altogether due to poor health since the pandemic. The sick are expected to survive on Statutory Sick Pay of £99.35 per week. The average life expectancy is falling.
• The naked alignment of the state with capital and moneyed interests has turned it into a killing machine. During the period 2012-2019, nearly 335,000 people died from government imposed austerity policies which eroded incomes and welfare services. Women have been disproportionately affected.
• In 2021, some 117,000 people died while waiting for hospital appointments in England.  With chronic lack of NHS capacity, the death-toll will rise. The British Heart Foundation estimates that due to severe ambulance delays, inaccessible care and ever-growing waiting lists some 30,000 have died prematurely from heart diseases.

Sikka stresses that ‘the country is sinking’ – an opinion shared by many 

He describes these institutionalised inequalities, misery and state-sponsored deaths as being incompatible with any notion of democracy and humanity and ends by saying that ‘Who governs’ is a major question of our times.: “We can have democracy and public accountability or rampant corporate power concentrated in the hands of a few business executives, but not both”.

What can bring about change for the better? Each reader may have different answers – and we need to hear them all. This writer can only see three beneficial ways forward:

The first is localism: local/regional provision of local needs for food, housing and energy (local grids) instead of relying on multinational companies.

The second is local/regional government (see Devolution and the Constitution after Coronavirus: George Morran). It will be subject to the same ‘big money’ temptations as national government but the signs will be more visible and those who succumb will be more easily taken to task by those living around them.

The third is proportional representation, which, by replacing the current first-past-the post system, will more closely reflect the wishes of all the electors. Of the 43 countries most often considered to be within Europe, 40 use some form of proportional representation to elect their MPs.

England and Wales (Northern Ireland and Scotland already used it) benefitted by the use of this system in EU elections, returning MEPs who reflected a wider range of beliefs and aspirations than have been admitted to its national parliament.

‘Business as usual’ is an option the 90% are finding less bearable day after day.

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Prem Sikka is Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

 

 

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